


Sugar & Salt

by notallballs (notallbees)



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Crushes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Crush, First Kiss, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Kissing, Language Barrier, M/M, Making Out, No Spoilers, Pre-Relationship, References to Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29879652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notallbees/pseuds/notallballs
Summary: There was a quiet pause between them, and Reki was just about to change the subject when Langa continued, "I used to have a sugar daddy."Reki laughed again. "Right," he said, playing along. "Back in Canada.""Yes," Langa said flatly.Langa lets Reki into a little secret about his past, and finds some catharsis.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa & Hasegawa Oliver, Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki, Hasegawa Langa/Original Character(s)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 183





	Sugar & Salt

**Author's Note:**

> me: what if langa used to be a sugar baby  
> me: haha what if i made it SAD
> 
>   
> Huge thanks to ver, jei and sushi for their various input on translating 'sugar baby/daddy' in Japanese. On that note: please excuse the clumsiness around the translation elements (which are very brief), there isn't really an ideal way to communicate this in a fic.

It was a Friday night, and the rain had kept them away from S, so Langa and Reki had spent the evening at Reki's house instead, watching skate videos and playing video games. It was starting to get dark when Reki returned to his room, so he switched on the light above his desk and pulled the window closed to stop the insects from all crowding in.

"Okay," he said, flopping on his bed beside Langa. "I helped Mom put the twins to bed, so we're officially off babysitting duty tomorrow."

"Good work," Langa said, not looking up from his phone. 

Langa was lying on his stomach, and Reki leaned into him, draping his leg over Langa's calves. "Whatcha doing?"

"All these girls from school tried to add me on Pinsta," Langa said, sounding disgruntled. He scrolled down the page. "I don't recognise any of them. Should I add them back?"

"I dunno," Reki said, reaching out to tilt Langa's phone toward him. "Are they cute?"

Langa shrugged. "I suppose."

"Lemme see."

Langa relinquished his phone, and Reki began to scroll through, looking for familiar names and faces. He offered a running commentary to Langa as he did so, saying things like, "Oh that's Uemura, she's in our class", or "I'm pretty sure that's a teacher", and "Don't bother with her, I heard she only dates rich guys, she's definitely a _himo_ ".

Langa wrinkled his nose. "What's that?" He repeated the slang word. "String?"

Reki snorted. "No, like _enkou_?" he suggested. And, when Langa still looked blank, he awkwardly continued, "You know, like a girl with an older guy, and he pays for her stuff, or even gets her an apartment or a car, and they—" He paused, face heating. "She has sex with him and stuff in return, I think?"

"Ohh." Langa's expression cleared and he gave a satisfied nod. "Like a _sugar baby_."

It was Reki's turn to frown. "Sugar baby?" he echoed, not recognising the English term. 

Langa nodded. "I guess it's women most of the time, and usually they have an older man who pays them, called a _sugar daddy_."

"Oh." Reki laughed. "Yeah! I get it. We call it _papa katsu_. So it's the same then." He squinted at Langa, noticing the way he'd pointed out that it wasn't _always_ women. "So, guys do it too?"

"Oh, yeah, some," Langa said, setting down his phone with a sigh. There was a quiet pause between them, and Reki was just about to change the subject when Langa continued, "I used to have a sugar daddy."

Reki laughed again. "Right," he said, playing along. "Back in Canada." 

"Yes," Langa said flatly. 

"Can you imagine?" Reki snorted. "I guess it would be easier if you could do that now, then you wouldn't have to beg Oka to give you more hours at the shop."

Langa glanced away. "I don't do that anymore."

Reki was about to make another joke, but something in Langa's countenance made him hesitate. Langa could be hard to read, but Reki knew him well enough by now to mostly tell the difference between his deadpan humour and him being serious. "Oh, shit," he muttered. "You weren't kidding."

"Oh...no," Langa said quietly. 

"I'm so sorry," Reki blurted. "I didn't mean to—I mean, I don't have a problem with it, I just didn't expect—"

"It's okay," Langa said. He glanced back at Reki, a faint smile crossing his lips. "Kind of a weird way to tell you I'm gay, huh?"

Reki's brain screeched to a halt. "O-oh." He hadn't expected that, and it made his heart pound for reasons that he couldn't fully name, but that he knew had more than a little to do with the way Langa's smile made his stomach flip. "S-so," he said, pushing that aside for the moment. "You had a—a sugar daddy?"

"Yeah," Langa muttered. 

Reki's mouth was dry. He flailed around for something to say. "Do you miss him?"

Langa's face did something complicated that meant he was either vaguely annoyed by the question, or didn't know how to answer. Or both. "No," he said eventually. "He was nice, but I'd already stopped seeing him when I moved here."

"Oh."

Langa scowled at him. "Stop saying 'oh' like that," he grumbled. "If it bothers you that much, I'll go home—"

"No, no!" Reki said quickly, putting his hand on Langa's shoulder as he started to get up. "Don't go. It doesn't bother me. I was just surprised." When Langa sank back onto the bed, Reki smiled encouragingly at him. "Did you wanna…talk about it?"

For a moment, Langa just squinted at him, perhaps trying to decide if Reki was in earnest, but eventually he shrugged and flopped back to lean against the wall. Figuring that Langa might find it easier to share without someone staring at him, Reki moved over to sit beside him, so that their shoulders were just touching. 

"What do you want to know?" Langa asked eventually.

Reki hummed thoughtfully. "I dunno! Everything!" he said, laughing softly. "Why did you do it? What was it like? How much did you get paid? Did you always know you were gay? Have you ever dated any other guys? What was—"

"Wait, wait," Langa said, closing his eyes briefly. "You're going too fast."

"Sorry!" Reki said. He hugged his arms around his knees, flexing his toes against the bed in an effort to keep still. Langa didn't usually mind him talking too fast, although he got told off a lot for it in school, but Reki knew that sometimes he rushed ahead while Langa needed more time to gather his thoughts. 

"I think...I probably always knew I was gay," Langa said at last, speaking softly. He was staring down at his hands, where he kept winding and unwinding a loose thread from his sleeve around his index finger. "I never really thought about it either way until I met that guy."

"Like, you just knew when you met him?" Reki asked, unable to keep from jumping in. His stomach was turning somersaults, and he let his feet slide out and wrapped his arms around his waist instead. "Could you tell right away?"

Langa shook his head. "I guess I just had a feeling. I was—" He paused, biting his lip. "Me and my dad always went snowboarding around my birthday. Mom came sometimes too, but mostly it was just us. My uncle runs a snowboarding shop in this place called Jasper, they have loads of winter sports there. My dad used to be an instructor there before we moved out to Vancouver for my mom's job."

"It sounds nice," Reki ventured, glancing over at him.

Langa smiled. "Yeah, it's beautiful. There's mountains all around, and in winter it's like this magical wonderland." He laughed. "I mean, it's absolutely freezing, and they have the...what do you call it, to move the snow?" "Plow?" "Yeah, they'd have the snow plows out constantly to keep the streets clear. You wouldn't be able to skate except in the summer. But I loved it there. Me and Dad would go up into the mountains and just ride the snow all day, go home for a hot bath, then do it again the next day."

Reki sat in a stunned silence, absorbing Langa's words. He'd never heard the other boy talk so much in one go, even if he did it in a slightly awkward, halting way. He wondered if Langa would talk more often if someone would only ask him. 

"So, that's where you met this guy?" Reki prompted, when he realised that Langa had fallen silent again.

"Yeah." Langa took a deep breath and sighed it out gently. "We had to come down early that day because a blizzard set in, so my dad suggested we go to the ski lodge to get something to eat and warm up." As he talked, he ceased winding the loose thread around his fingers and instead began tapping his fingertips against his ankle instead. "My uncle was supposed to meet us there, but he couldn't get his car started, so my dad went off to help while I waited in the bar."

Here, he paused again, and when Reki glanced at him, he saw that Langa's cheeks were pink. "That's where you met him?" he prompted. "Your—that guy?" 

Langa nodded. "He...sent me a drink." Langa paused, his blush deepening. "You know, the way they do in movies? I should've told him I was too young, but I liked that he did that. Nobody ever came onto me like that before, and never a guy."

Reki licked his dry lips. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," Langa said, shrugging again. "He came over and asked if he could sit next to me, and I said sure. We just talked for a while, really. He lived in Vancouver too. When my dad called to say they were heading back, the guy—he was called Stefan, he asked for my number, and asked if we could get together sometime. He was a lot older than me, and married, but he would sometimes have a sugar baby on the side."

"Huh." Reki wrinkled his nose. "That's kinda sleazy."

Langa shook his head. "It wasn't like that. His wife knew about it. I met her one time, she was nice."

"Oh," Reki said, eyes widening as he digested this new possibility. "Uh—I mean, not _oh_ , but...huh."

Langa snorted, but bumped Reki's shoulder with his own to show that he appreciated it. 

"So...did you—" Reki paused, realising that he'd been about to ask if Langa had slept with the man. He pressed his lips together, forcing the question back down his throat. That definitely wasn't any of his business. 

But apparently Langa had chosen today to be perceptive, and seemed to know exactly what Reki wanted to ask without him voicing it. "We had sex, yeah," he muttered. "But not a lot of times. Usually we'd just talk, or hang out. Go out to dinner."

"Sounds nice."

"Mm."

"How come you stopped seeing him?"

Langa swallowed heavily. "Because of my dad."

"Oh. He found out?"

"No." Langa looked down at his hands. "When he died, I—" He broke off, voice cracking.

Reki waited, but Langa didn't say any more. After a few moments, he took a shuddering breath and lifted a hand to his face, covering his eyes. 

"Th-that was—the last t-time we went away—" Langa said, struggling to get his words out, his chest rising and falling sharply. "W-when I t-turned sixteen. I-I—"

"Oh, hey," Reki said, instinctively reaching out to cover Langa's knee with his hand. When Langa didn't resist, Reki slid an arm around his shoulders, pulling Langa against him as he started to cry in earnest. "I'm sorry, Langa. It's okay, you can cry all you need. I won't laugh or anything."

Langa leaned into him more heavily, clutching at Reki's hoodie and burying his face in Reki's shoulder. Langa had never really mentioned his dad except once or twice in passing, and it was too easy to forget that Langa was still grieving, since he so rarely talked about his feelings. Reki had to remind himself sometimes that he'd never known Langa before losing his dad, and could only piece him together from little things he said, or the one time Langa's mom had hinted that he used to be more outgoing. 

Reki had never held one of his friends while they cried before, but he'd soothed crying sisters hundreds of times, so he just did what he normally would with them, running his hand slowly up and down Langa's back, and threading his fingers slowly through Langa's hair, murmuring nonsense about how it would alright, reassuring Langa that he wasn't going to be alone, that Reki would take care of him. 

"Sorry," Langa would gasp every few breaths. "I'm—sorry, Reki—I'm sorry—"

"Shh," Reki soothed, stroking his hair back from his face and kissing his forehead. "It's okay."

"B-but—I'm—g-getting s-snot on you," Langa stammered.

Reki laughed. "I have baby sisters, you think I don't always have snot on me?" He gently nudged Langa with his shoulder, and when Langa lifted his head, Reki used the end of his sleeve to gently wipe Langa's cheeks, and then his mouth and nose. "There," he said, grinning. "All better—"

He didn't finish speaking before Langa leaned in and kissed him. 

Reki froze at first, but Langa didn't pull away, and after a moment Reki found himself kissing back. He didn't know how to kiss, but Langa didn't seem to care, moving his lips against Reki's slowly, while Reki tried his best to mimic him. 

"Reki," Langa moaned, sliding his hand up to cup the back of Reki's neck, fingers slipping into his hair. He kissed Reki again, sliding his tongue into Reki's mouth. He tasted salty from his tears, but his mouth was hot and thrilling. Reki unconsciously pulled at Langa's sweatshirt as they melted into one another, and he moaned softly at the sensation of Langa sucking on the tip of his tongue. 

They broke apart finally minutes later, both panting, and stared at one another in the low light. 

"Are you okay?" Reki whispered.

Langa frowned. "Are _you_?"

Reki laughed softly. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"I kissed you."

"Oh, uh." Reki glanced down, unconsciously reaching up to touch the back of his neck, which was hot with his blush. "I think—I wanted you to." He looked up again, smiling at the surprise on Langa's face. "Really, are you alright?"

Langa nodded. "Yeah," he said, his voice rough. "Sorry, for getting upset." 

Reki shook his head. "I don't mind. I'm glad you felt you could talk to me."

"Yeah," Langa said, his voice coming out as a heavy exhale. After a moment, he slumped into Reki again, leaning his head on Reki's shoulder. "Thanks. For listening."

"Anytime," Reki said, putting his arms around Langa and squeezing him tightly. "I mean it."

Langa breathed out heavily, then put his arm around Reki's waist and nuzzled into his shoulder. "I'm really glad I met you."

Reki grinned. "Yeah. Me too."

**Author's Note:**

> [find me on twitter](https://twitter.com/notallbees/status/1368222603148750850) | [my sk8 fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notallbees/works?fandom_id=52382346)


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